Doesn't Pete Buttigieg have an issue with lactating, maybe this is a real issue for him and his husband? Wait… never mind, none of my business…

My wife wasn't able to breastfeed. You'd be surprised at how many women don't produce.

there are some babies that have allergies
and need formula

Has anyone notice that potatoes contain alkaloids that, in turn, resemble a factor that, in circulation, inhibits prolactin production, so that telling dry women to stop eating potatoes has a significant chance of allowing breastfeeding to work? Organized medicine, the Medically Organized Relying On Nonsense (MORONs), missed that point.

Every woman has two breasts. She can feed two babies. I'm afraid we're all going to have to share, this is what socialism leads to. Everyone's babies suckling every available pregnant milk abled boob.

Why don't all women breastfeed? Let me count the ways. 1) died in childbirth (mother or child or both); 2) severe illness incapacitating one or the other; 3) "inconvenience", as with working mothers who have to pump their milk and worry about leaking through their clothes in the office; 4) vanity of losing firmness after weaning; 5) life situations of broken family, violent relations, drug and other problems; 6) ignorance where instinct leaves off; 7) availability of substitute mothers (“wet nurses” who keep lactating like a milked cow).

All unfortunate situations, but nature is wasteful with life, and pragmatic. As long as enough are born and grow strong, missing out on some doesn't affect the big picture, only the individual case. The same with all lifeforms--not all are born as world-class specimens, either. Nature is indifferent to individual happiness; that's up to us. And yet it is the unique breakthrough by a unique individual that turns tides and levels mountains. One in a million will do to keep us going. So what if a few billion perish in wars and plagues?

As for breastfeeding, ultimately that is no one else's business, just as with contraception. Formula makers gain from mothers not nursing--sell more formula. Here is where the individual mother needs to make an independent decision, since such businesses are clever salespeople and "influencers". As long as people can be motivated away from or towards choices not in their own best long-term interest, there will be controversies in our complicated societies.

As to the attraction of breasts to men, the deeply buried subconscious whose job it is to instigate mating and reproduction--call it the selfish gene--tempts and tricks males to want sex, especially with fit females, which sometimes does, in fact, produce infants that will need to suck on those nipples that for the male are so attractive and whose exercise and stimulation trains the woman's body towards motherhood and contractions. Pleasurable sensations are the gene's trickery. Otherwise a smart species would avoid altogether the labor pains and decades of devotion to raising the next generation. We have a long way to go to figure out how to have life, liberty, and potential happiness all in one package and still keep human evolution going as a positive process.

And yes, I did bear and nurse three children.

I am the last one to ask anything about babies and how to feed them, but my main reaction to this story is this: What an opportunity could exist if we actually had a free market and the government got OUT OF THE WAY!

Had a woman post on Telegram that if you need formula, go to Amazon, switch it to Canada, and they have boatloads. Only the U.S. has a FDA shutting down plants for 6 months, and creating an artificial shortage. But then, our current communist brandon regime seems to specialize in creating artificial shortages and problems.

Don't women dry up after the baby is weaned? I recall that 50 years ago there was outrage over this against a company that had been marketing baby formula in poor countries, causing mothers to dry up before they realized they couldn't afford to continue buying it.

That has really puzzled me: other than being used as "guy magnets", boobs DO have another function, that of nourishing infants.
But, I guess that's just me, not being "woke", or something.

No breasts in my house except the chicken cutlets. LOL
This is a business opportunity for Wet Nurses.

I won't comment on the pros and cons of breastfeeding, but are people really going to let their babies starve to death, because manufactured infant formulas don't exist?

Work the problem, people...

There was testing showing covid vaccine can be passed to children through breast milk, so Maybe we do need to switch to Goat milk for a while, till the vaccinated all finish getting boosted till their immune systems fail.

If the 90 % of moms that can breast feed would, then there would be plenty of formula for the 10 % that can't.

I had to stop nursing because I produced so much that the baby couldn't handle the pressurized jet. A breast pump only made me produce more. I never knew how huge nursing breasts could get, and it HURT! Hurt is a very mild word for what I experienced, and I wished I could have done it like my mother, who had to go to formula after her last childbirth--triplets. Nine kids total. Mom, I salute you!

when we have gotten way too reliant on the benefits of what our society produces, we forget that everyone has gotten too used to "just in time" to cut down inventories. Kind of a bad idea , as we are seeing right now.

Some end-user inventory is not a bad thing in terms of food, medicines, clothes, transportation, even cell phones.

If you are expecting, make an appt with a lactation specialist for the week after your date! You would think that since human mammals have been around for 100+k years, bf would just be instinctual but it is not. Find a friend, sister, aunt with a recent a baby and have her show you how it's done. Don't allow baby to grasp nipple (pain!), you want mouth around the entire areole. There is nothing sadder than a sleep-deprived mother with painful nipples and a crying hungry baby at 3am. Oh did I mention setting up an appt with a lactation specialist IN ADVANCE of your due date?

Breast feeding for working mom's can be a challenge. It requires a pump and storage. Lactation is not always consistent. Working at home is a better scenario if possible. And when my younger brother and sister were born it was milk from contented cows and a formula my mom concocted. We three developed normally as best as I can tell.

Suppose babies aren't using them for the same reason I am not, so sad ;(

But but Pete Buttegieg!!!!!!!

Has Joe Biden started posting here? This is the kind of cluelessness I’d expect from the Teleprompter in Chief. You must know that there are allergies, sensitivities, babies in foster care, babies adopted, and other circumstances that make formula optimal if not crucial.

The baby formula is made from cow's milk and is exposed to all the antibiotics and hormones that cows are pumped up on. Formula is manufactured by a long process with many steps including stripping out and then adding back fat and fat soluble vitamins along with water soluble vitamins. Original "organic" cow's milk from the store or farm might just be fine. Who can't buy milk for a baby?